


The Wrong Side of the Season

by arthur_pendragon



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Autumn/Winter, Canon Era, Fluff, M/M, New Relationship, Newly established relationship, Pining Merlin, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-09-17 15:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16977303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_pendragon/pseuds/arthur_pendragon
Summary: The minute that Arthur leaves for war, Merlin begins griping.





	The Wrong Side of the Season

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for this opportunity, and to my beta schweet_heart who helped tremendously <3

The minute that Arthur leaves for war, Merlin begins griping.

He gripes, and he gripes, and he gripes, until Gaius gives him the vexed Look he reserves for the rarest of occasions and sends him on a plant-gathering excursion that’s sure to last the whole day.

Merlin thinks, sullenly ripping out some poor nightshade that most certainly did not deserve its fate, that Gaius seems to have too little patience for Merlin, whereas he ably fields Uther’s worries about his aches and ailments at all hours of the day. He is well within his rights to complain! As Arthur’s manservant, Merlin should, like _any_ good manservant, always be there with him, especially at times like this — one shudders to think of the stench that’s probably saturated Arthur’s clothes, to say nothing of the armour Merlin’s replacement (bloody _Morris_ ) must be mishandling.

But forget all of that; what’s the point of Merlin, his magic, his entire existence if he isn’t by Arthur’s side to protect him? Isn’t that his destiny? The only reason Merlin has remained at the castle while Arthur’s at the front line, risking his life without Merlin there to save it, is that the autumn chill has put so many of the royal household out of commission that not one servant can be spared for anything else. Uther himself had been the one to forbid Merlin from going.

Arthur hadn’t protested a whit. He’d supported the decision, even. 

Merlin viciously tears at a few sprigs of yarrow and drops them into his sack to wither. Leave it to Arthur to be all noble and _no, Father, I think you’re right, Merlin would be absolutely useless out there_ at precisely the wrong moment. So now Merlin pours the wine and stands at sullen attention for Uther and Morgana, the chair where Arthur would sit and look stupidly regal starkly empty.

The trek back to the castle is no fun when there’s no Arthur waiting there, ready to chide him about his unpunctuality and demand a steaming bath and kiss him silly.

* * *

 

“Boy,” Uther says. Merlin freezes.

(They’re well into the campaign. Arthur has not returned; word has reached Camelot, however, that the war has turned out to be less of one than expected — Bayard, the treaty-breaker, seems to have come to his senses and realised that as long as Crown Prince Arthur Pendragon fights, his army fights. And Arthur’s one stubborn fucking prick.)

Merlin wishes he’d been faster leaving the hall with the dinner plates. Uther hasn’t ever been particularly kind to him, and his last wretched command has seen to Merlin’s misery these past many months. Nothing he could say now would help Merlin’s mood.

“Yes, sire,” he says anyway, for the stocks have missed him but the sentiment is not returned.

“Do you mope for Arthur’s absence?”

Gaius’s face is spectacularly smooth when Merlin shoots him a suspicious glance. He hasn’t been moping. Blatantly. Unless Gaius snitched to the king, which he wouldn’t do (he’d promised). Merlin doesn’t dare look at Uther as he replies, “I fear I do not understand, my lord,” in a careful tone.

“You’ve been far more of a bumbling idiot than usual,” and oh, Merlin’s… flattered? that Uther has observed him enough to have his own metric of Merlin’s ineptitude. “I have to assume it’s over my son, since Gaius tells me there isn’t anything else in your life that you would be this torn up over.”

Morgana stands abruptly and hurries out of the hall past Merlin, Gwen right behind her, but Merlin spots their grins out of the corner of his eye. He hates them. Just a bit. They’re completely fine without Arthur but not everyone’s like them, y’know. And Gaius grassed on him anyway. _Why isn’t Arthur here?_

After Merlin casts about too long for a reply and ends up mumbling himself into silence, Uther sighs and continues, “He’ll be returning after the first snow falls in Camelot. I tell you this in the hope that you won’t accidentally poison us before then. Get out of my sight.”

Merlin does.

And if Gaius shakes him awake the next morning and points to the window — shouting something about  _reckless, foolish use of magic_ and _you’re not a weeping maiden and would do well to stop acting like one_ , not that Merlin’s paying much heed to his snitch of a father figure — where inches of snow have piled themselves upon each other on the sill and, seemingly, everywhere else in the land, it’s not Merlin’s fault he misses Arthur so much that he quite literally fucking brought a season forward to get him back.

* * *

 

Arthur comes home while Merlin’s on another herb-collecting exile, and that is so heinously unfair — Merlin had maybe, possibly, twist his arm, wanted to be there for that first sight of his prince — that when he sees the knights and the horses and the foot soldiers milling about and dispersing in the snowy courtyard, he _dashes_ to the infirmary to drop off the plants (which, if they could speak, would have Stories to tell).

“Gaius,” he yells breathlessly, bursting into the room. “Arthur’s back! I’m going to go up to his —”

Arthur half-turns where he’s standing in front of the fireplace, chatting to the physician. Merlin stops short, all the breath leaving him in a rush, and goes red.

(He’s in love with Arthur. The maidenlike reaction was going to happen.)

“I was wondering where you’d buggered off to,” Arthur says. “Abysmal level of service, honestly, Merlin, you ought to have been waiting in my chambers; look, I’m freezing in my sodden armour —”

Merlin beams.

Arthur stutters to a halt, startled, before he exhales and returns the beam with a beautiful smile of his own. Merlin beams even more brightly.

“Oh, dear lord,” Gaius mutters.

* * *

 

The walk up to Arthur’s rooms doesn’t go quite the way Merlin had hoped. Arthur’s attention is aimed not at him but at the changes made to the corridors in his absence. There’s nothing special about brighter tapestries and more polished busts, all right? It’s what happens when one _cleans_. It’s nothing important. Not that one would believe so from the way Arthur comments on them, pleased and impressed and frustrating Merlin as all hell. Merlin had been looking forward to an account of the war, and even more to an admission of how Arthur dearly regretted dragging Morris with him instead of Merlin and owed his beloved a score of apologies.

“So, were you miserable without me?” Arthur asks, once they’re safely at their destination and Merlin has stripped him (of only his armour, sadly) and got a good fire going.

“Not in the least,” Merlin retorts, sullen, definitely not throwing a tantrum like a spoilt child left alone for two whole minutes. (Merlin has considered many, many methods of falling out of love with his prat, and not one has worked, to Merlin’s eternal anguish.)

“Really now,” says Arthur, and the amusement in his voice is palpable to the point that Merlin suspects Gaius of snitching on him again.

“’Course! D’you know how many days off I’ve had in these five months?”

Arthur laughs, throwing his head back in the way that Merlin so cherishes and going over to the table, where another servant (on Merlin’s request) had placed a bowl of fruit, some bread, and a pitcher of ale.

“I mean it, you know! And I don’t think you were all that miserable either. I talked to Sir Leon in the courtyard on my way to Gaius’s.” (Arthur doesn’t need to know the whole truth, which is that Merlin doesn’t even remember anything between his arrival in the courtyard and his arrival in the infirmary.) “He told me _everything_. All the things you got up to whilst you were… swinging your sword around.”

The innuendo is not missed by Arthur, who’s sitting on the edge of the table in fresh nightclothes. “What’re you talking about?” he says through a mouthful of apple, frowning at Merlin.

Merlin breezily goes over to Arthur’s wardrobe, flinging open its doors dramatically. “Oh, sire, don’t play coy with me. I know all about the camp followers.”

“ _What_ camp followers?”

“Honestly, Arthur, it’s all right. Admit it. You didn’t miss Camelot.”

Arthur says nothing, and Merlin rifles through his clothes for lack of a better thing to do, having made the wildest assertion he could think of and suddenly regretting it for fear it’ll turn out to be _true_. Which is why he completely fails to notice Arthur coming up behind him, right until Arthur whirls him around with a hand on his shoulder (Merlin yelps, and resolves to wipe Arthur’s memory of said yelp at the earliest opportunity) and pins him against the shelves.

“Camp followers,” Arthur says, eyebrows raised. “Sir Leon told you I bedded camp followers in between winning the war.”

Merlin shrugs. “He might not have said exactly —”

“You jealous little tart,” Arthur laughs, hand sliding from Merlin’s shoulder to Merlin’s neck. Merlin flushes. Arthur’s hand is so warm. “You don’t remember the promise you had me make at the tavern, do you?”

The sense of impending calamity that overtakes Merlin is about thirty minutes too fucking late.

“What promise? And what d’you mean, _jealous little tart?_ ”

“The one we made at the tavern the night before I left. Arthur,” Arthur begins in a poor impression of Merlin. “Arthur, don’t goooo. Arthur, I love you. How am I going to live without you? Why aren’t you taking me along?”

“Hang on,” Merlin tries to object, but Arthur barrels on. 

“Don’t bed anyone there, okay? No wenches! Don’t do it! I’ll ask all the knights! I’ll die if you do it!” Frankly, Merlin’s offended at the falsetto that Arthur’s adopted. And at all the words, because Merlin would never say something as awfully trite as — “Bed _me_ when you come back, all right? As much as you want,” Arthur finishes, with the sweetest, smuggest smile. “And I solemnly vowed to keep my hands to myself, just for you.”

“I would never say any of that!” Merlin cries out, scandalised, having probably said all of that and more. “You’re lying through your teeth!” The wood of the shelves is cutting into his back, what with Arthur cornering him against the open cabinet without the least concern for Merlin’s poor skin. Merlin only wishes he could melt into the compartments, away from Arthur and his confidence. “I have lost all feelings of love for you whatsoever, you apple-breathed arse, and if you think you can _tyrannise_ me like this just because —”

“I didn’t sleep with anyone there, Merlin, because I was waiting to come home and sleep with _you_.” Arthur looks so, so fond, leaning in and treating Merlin with the familiar intimacy he’s been missing for so long. Merlin gives up.

“Fine, I might’ve been a bit miserable without you here —”

“Knew it,” Arthur crows, placing a triumphant kiss on the tip of Merlin’s nose and dragging him into a hug. “C’mon, Merlin, as if I’d ever —”

“Sh’tup,” Merlin says, voice muffled by Arthur’s neck.

Arthur snorts. “If it makes you feel any better,” he murmurs, “I spent every waking moment wishing you were with me instead of Morris.”

“Serves you right for making me stay behind,” Merlin mumbles back, pulling Arthur so close his ribs hurt. “Dollophead.”

Arthur sighs happily and kisses Merlin’s hair again and again until Merlin’s laughing in delight.

_fin_


End file.
